It was back to earth with a resounding bump for the Sauber team in Canada, after the comparable highs of a points’ finish at the previous round in Turkey. The Swiss squad suffered another double-DNF, courtesy of a first-lap crash for Kamui Kobayashi and an engine blow-up for Pedro de la Rosa.

Both Saubers were involved in opening-lap fracas, with de la Rosa clobbered by Vitaly Petrov’s errant Renault at the start of the race, and then Kobayashi running out of talent road at the final chicane and smacking the ‘Wall of Champions’ cement and retiring on the spot.

Team boss Peter Sauber was seriously unimpressed with another point-less weekend, and even less so with Kobayashi, who threw away prospects of a good result after making a brilliant start from 18th on the grid to be running 10th before his crash.

“As is often the case in Canada, it was easy to score championship points today, however, we didn’t collect them,” Sauber said later.

“We lost one car which was in tenth at the end of lap one through an over-optimistic move, and the second one through an engine failure.”